Post Content

Pluggers, 10/4/17

Do you guys know about Just Watch? It’s a great site where you can plug in pretty much any movie or TV show you can think of and it’ll tell you which of the innumerable streaming and paid download sites out there has it available. (There are probably tons of others, but this is the one I use.) Anyway, I plugged Gunsmoke into it and found…

So I immediately take back all the unkind thoughts I had about Older Dog-Man here. You’ve hit the jackpot, buddy! Your meticulously catalogued collection of videotapes, kept secured in your locked Gunsmoke Closet,represent a resource more precious than gold in the plugger community. Of curse, videotape is an analog medium, and with each viewing the tape degrades, so you’ve got to be smart about rationing wholesome Western entertainment. That’s why you have to make sure that your fellow pluggers pay a price that reflects both market demand and the irreplaceable nature of the resource before you allow them to sit enraptured and watch 333×480 black-and-white imagery flicker across the flat-screen TV that your nephew, after much coaxing, finally hooked up to your wheezing old VCR. He doesn’t get a cut. You sent him $5 for his birthday every year until he turned 18. And you dutifully hit “Record” on the tape machine every night at 11 for years when they still played decent syndicated TV on that UHF channel that’s all half-hour commercials for kitchen stuff now. You’ve earned this.

Lockhorns, 10/4/17

Even see a comic that just seems really stuck in a specific time period, like the Lockhorns with its sort of early-to-mid ’60s suburban vibe, and think, “You know, this strip should really get in touch with a more modern set of cultural touchstones if it wants to stay relevant”? Well, be careful what you ask for, is all I’m saying.

Marvin, 10/4/17

Wait, does Marvin’s dad think that women … don’t use toilets? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems this strip has yet to fully explore all of its characters’ terrible and wrongheaded ideas about urination and defecation.

Post Content

Six Chix, 9/24/17

This comic is like one of those ambiguous Gestalt pictures from Psych 101 — how you interpret it depends on where you focus.

Concentrate on the pavement crack that disappears in the lower panels, and the horrifying Cyclops-girl somehow “poings” all the concrete back into place, trapping the pavement worker’s jackhammer, and he struggles to release it. But focus on the resemblance between the jackhammer and the pogo stick, and the worker suddenly realizes that tedious work with a noisy tool has replaced carefree play with a favorite toy, and he cries for his lost childhood.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/24/17

Funky prepares a Thermos® of coffee to take on his run but leaves it at home. Now Runner’s World seems to favor drinking coffee before a run, but I’ve never heard of anybody drinking it during one. And out of a Thermos®? He’s not wearing a backpack; how did he plan to carry it? How would he drink out of it, anyway — wouldn’t he have to stop, pull it out, and open it to fill his cup? And wouldn’t most of it spill out once he started running again? Maybe that’s the plan, to bring coffee along so he has an excuse to stop every once in a while? He might need to stop a lot, since he has prostate problems and probably needs to pee pretty often. Maybe all that’s wrong and he drank his coffee at home before his run, but out of a Thermos® instead of a mug? But why would anybody do that when there’s a set of drinking glasses right there? Wait, why is there a set of drinking glasses next to the coffee maker?

Why are the throwaway panels on the bottom this week?

Lockhorns, (panel) 9/24/17

I would’ve gone with A Rake’s Progress, but OK. What’s the conflict here? Border dispute? Feud between the Binner and Bagger clans? Mulch ado about nothing?

That’s it for me — thank you for a lovely time!

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

The Lockhorns, 8/18/17

While the Lockhorns occasionally demonstrate the strong emotions you might expect from a couple trapped in an endless, awful hell-marriage between two people who hate each other, more often their faces display only the icy, indifferent numbness that you might expect from people who try their best not to feel anything at all. Today’s panel is particularly grim in that regard: Leroy is of course unfazed as the house fills with thick, choking black smoke and his and Loretta’s murder-suicide pact finally goes into operation, but his friend, who appears to have dropped by to visit at exactly the wrong time, seems only mildly more concerned. I’m not sure if this is because the Lockhorns put out a force-field of ennui that snuffs out the energy of hapless passers-by, or if it’s just a result of carbon monoxide drowsiness.

Crankshaft, 8/18/17

Crankshaft looks a lot more proud and determined than usual in this panel. “That’s right,” he thinks. “We live in a world where an abundance-based economy is possible and nobody needs to go hungry. The hoarders and wreckers of the parastic food industry will have their plans ruined and capitalism itself will be shaken, by the power of my zucchini!”

Mary Worth, 8/18/17

Mary Worth is many, many delightful things, but one thing it is generally not is subtle about the future direction of its plotlines, and keeping that in mind I want to point out that the name of the fancy restaurant where this handsome divorced fortysomething doctor took a college-aged hospital admin temp on a date is French for “THE LOVE DOG.”